We had some special visitors in school recently to help bring our learning about mountains to life! They were representatives from the Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team. They brought their Land-Rover Vehicle, all their equipment and some beautiful and clever Rescue Dogs. It was a very interesting talk and experience. We learned all about what people do on mountains and what happens if things go wrong!

As part of our learning about Catholic communities we visited St Marie’s Cathedral in Sheffield.

We learned all about how the Cathedral is the centre of our Diocese of Hallam. We explored the many chapels, learned all about the cathedral’s history and experienced how music and singing play a huge part in the Eucharistic celebrations.

We also participated in activities about the Liturgical Year during which we got to dress up in vestments and explore the various colours that relate to each part of the church’s calendar.

Afterwards we explored artifacts and symbols related to the activities, sacraments and day to day life of the cathedral.

We recently had a fantastic sports taster day at St Pius. We took part in lots of different activities to develop our agility, as well as our running, jumping and throwing skills. We also got to compete in small team games which was great fun. We all demonstrated excellent levels of fair play and team work.

Our Learning From Previous Years

Today (5th July), Year 5 and 6 celebrated and presented all our learning this term with our families and friends. We had an awesome Shakespeare Showcase….

As part of the Rotherham Children’s Festival we spent the day at Magna Science Museum at a special Story Day! To top off an absolutely awesome day we discovered that we had won the ‘Harris Burdick Writing Competition.’

It proved to be an exciting time as we got to see our artwork on display in the gallery…it looked amazing. Above is our certificate of excellence from Mr D Rew (The Head Of Education Rotherham).

We had the chance to watch an excellent production of Tom’s Midnight Garden.

We had the opportunity to meet some local book illustrators and authors who were extremely inspirational…in fact when we got back to school it inspired an enormous bout of story writing.

We also took part in an interactive ‘Big Story’ quiz!!! We actually won one and came second in another…

We have just had a wonderful and fun filled science and technology day at St Pius School. We learned about using computer aided design, creating prototypes, using technology for mould making, applying maths skills to measure ingredients as well as evaluating our own and other people’s finished products.

Above are some of the technology that we used and our products that we designed and made.

Here is a movie of our day…

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This half term we will be learning how to play ukuleles! We had a fantastic first session learning our scales, rhythm and linking notes to strings…Here we are playing along together.

Our class has taken part in the NSPCC Big Boardgame Day to raise money for a good cause! We dressed up as characters from boardgames and played some games such as Monopoly, Cluedo and chess!!

Our school council representatives doing a great job hosting a class meeting. Democracy in action!

This term our learning will be based around the theme of Shakespeare. We will be learning about life in Elizabethan England, the plays Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Sonnet poems as well as the life and times of William Shakespeare himself.

Here is some of the learning that we have started already…

As part of the Rotherham Children’s Festival our school is taking part in the Picture This project. Our focus is the ‘Weeping Woman’ by Pablo Picasso. We worked collaboratively with our FS2 to create a mural and also our own interpretations of the famous painting.

Rotherham United In The Community doing a great job working on our class fitness and following sessions up with learning about diet, healthy lifestyle and sports science.

Year Five had a great time competing in the Rotherham United Community Cup. We had the chance to play on the pitch at the fantastic New York Stadium. We showed great resilience, team spirit and sportsmanship.

We recently had a great day of sport at St Pius School. We got to develop skills in a wide range of sports. These are some images from the day!

As part of our whole school learning project about World Religions we explored Judaism. We learned all about symbols, places of worship, important people in Judaism, places of worship and the holy text.

We have had a fun filled World Book Day!

A strange trunk greeted us on our return to school after Christmas. It contained several items and a label.

We began to explore what we could infer and deduce about the owner from evidence that we found inside the trunk.

Inside one of the coat pockets we found an old crumpled up note which said;

‘To Captain Tory,

Wait at the harbour. Wave your lantern three times and we shall appear with the schooner. Make sure that you bring the boy!’

A little while later we found this painting on the classroom floor!! Could this be linked to the trunk? We matched the evidence in the trunk to the painting…but we then wondered who is the boy? Why has Captain Tory got such a firm grasp on him?

In Literacy we have been exploring characters through hot-seating and dramatic reconstructions.

Here are some examples of our pencil sketches in the style found in the book, ‘The Harris Burdick Mysteries.’

We have also been creating descriptive settings, poetry and pencil sketches based around the painting Captain Tory.

In Literacy we also learned about narrative poetry by exploring S T Coleridge’s Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

As part of our project related to the Harris Burdick Mysteries we have been exploring the methods, style and art of J M W Turner, the famous British artist.

These are our interpretations of his seascape called ‘Fishermen at Sea.’ We tried to catch the atmosphere and power of the sea just like Turner did.

As our learning around seafaring and Captain Tory grew, we decided to find-out a little more about other great mariners from history. We learned all about Columbus, Captain Cook, Lord Nelson, Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. We developed our research skills, note making and later we learned how to expand upon our notes to create fact files about each sailor.

We designed and made schooners. Firstly we explored shape and Nets of 3D shapes. We used and applied lots of Mathematics skills. These are some of our prototypes.

After we had evaluated our prototypes and decided upon how we could make improvements we turned our classroom into a shipbuilding yard. We invited our parents in to help build our class fleet!!! These are some examples. We were very proud of our schooners!

As part of Holocaust Memorial Day we visited the Ann Frank exhibition at Wath. It was extremely moving and thought provoking!

Our class have been learning about food technology in our ‘Master Chef’ classes with Mrs Glossop and Mr Barnett. We learn about healthy recipes, where our food comes from and the importance of a balanced diet!

In the Autumn term our learning project is based around the historical theme of World War Two.

As an introduction we researched our family links to World War Two. We were amazed at some of the incredible stories that we discovered.

These are a few examples of our Blitz paintings.We have been learning all about the Blitz and how people used to keep safe during bombing raids.

These are some of our classroom displays. We also created some amazing descriptive poetry based around a bombing raid during the Blitz. We developed our understanding of similes, metaphors and personification.

These are some of our interpretations of the work of Yorkshire artist Henry Moore who was commissioned to make paintings of the shelters during the London Blit

We developed our understanding of line and tone, perspective and creating atmosphere using detail such as blurring, colour and blending.

Henry Moore’s paintings were very atmospheric and the people had no faces and seemed anonymous. Almost as if the people could have been anyone, you or me even.

We enjoyed reading the novel, Goodnight Mr Tom.
We have been learning all about what it was like to be an evacuee.

To celebrate our learning and present it to others, we held a World War Two exhibition. Other year groups and our families came to experience what life was like in 1940s Britain. We looked just like William Beech from the novel Goodnight Mr Tom. We really got to experience what life might have been like in World War Two.

We all came to school dressed in clothing from the period. Fashions were very different then!!!

We learned all about how people had to ‘make do and mend’ or repair and recycle old clothing due to rationing of cloth. We decided that this might be a good thing nowadays to avoid waste.

These are actual homemade toys made in the 1940s for children to play with. They are on loan to our school from the museum. Can you guess what they are?

Due to rationing the food that was available to people had to be reduced. We were astonished at how little people had to eat and the type of food that they ate!

We weighed out how much essential foods people were allowed. We also explored food groups and how our bodies use certain food groups for different things. For instance, our bodies need carbohydrates for energy, protein for growth and vitamins and minerals to keep us healthy and help get well when we fall ill.

This would be your rations for a whole week!

Here we are creating a 3D scene of the Blitz. We also played a World War Two game of identifying planes from silhouettes and matching them to the actual aircraft that featured in the Blitz and Battle of Britain.

We have been applying our coding skills to create digital narratives about events in the Blitz. We had to create algorithms, debug and also add loops to repeat instructions. It took a lot of computational thinking!

Other images from our World War Two Exhibition

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We had a great Science learning day in November. After learning all about the V6 rockets used by the Nazis to bomb London, we then had a day learning about and making rocket propelled vehicles! It was so exciting.

We made and tested rockets, as well as making rocket propelled cars. It was great fun designing, testing our designs and adapting them during the making process. Afterwards we reflected upon our learning and evaluated how the models performed. We then went back and made further improvements.

It was wonderful to learn all about engineering, famous British engineers and how to become an engineer. It really made us think about future careers and raise our aspirations.

As our learning about World War Two comes to an end we have stopped to reflect the seriousness of war. We prayed for peace around the world. In art we explored the message and imagery behind Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.

Above is our own interpretation of Picasso’s famous painting. We further developed our observational skills, our understanding of scale and our pencil sketching skills.

Buenas Dias!!!!! In Spanish we have been learning how to greet people, introduce ourselves and talk about colours, animals and how to count to 20 in Spanish.